I don't know the full story, but my understanding is that the minimum budget required to do the '1000, would cover most blokes for a whole Super2 season.

There's a lot more to it, than just the nominal entry fee.

A team did this event a couple of years ago as a wildcard, rented a car, sourced engineering and preparation assistance, and garage equipment, insured it, and for the single event were said to not see a whole lot of change out of $150k when working out the value of cash and kind.

Just as Super2 pilots get called up into the main 1,000km race, technical bods become in demand for teams to bolster the strategy/engineering/preparation in teams up and down the lane too. Like Dr Slater at 888 Here

There are spare garages at the end of the lane... not dozens... but a number usually taken up by Dunlop tyre equipment & personnel... and a weighbridge/setup pad.. who could either contract to smaller space, or go back into the paddock. SupercarTV takes a number of garages too as a studio which equally could be somewhere else if required.

If only there was the demand for the space.

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A team did this event a couple of years ago as a wildcard, rented a car, sourced engineering and preparation assistance, and garage equipment, insured it, and for the single event were said to not see a whole lot of change out of $150k when working out the value of cash and kind.

Seems as you would expect 150k/3.5m season budget, or 5% of the full Supercars season budget.

A traditional privateer car in the traditional 1000 would surely cost less than that to run -- staffed entirely with mates working for a beer and burnt sausage, trailered to the track on an open-air trailer behind a Land Cruiser, engineering support consisting of nothing more than the owner-driver fiddling with the shock absorber knobs between seasons etc. Exactly as cars are prepared in lower categories.

Fully refreshed car with careful inventory of the fatigue cycles on all the components fitted? Not ruddy likely. More like flush the brake fluid, give it a polish and hope the thing makes it to the end without anything snapping!

Seems as you would expect 150k/3.5m season budget, or 5% of the full Supercars season budget.

A traditional privateer car in the traditional 1000 would surely cost less than that to run -- staffed entirely with mates working for a beer and burnt sausage, trailered to the track on an open-air trailer behind a Land Cruiser, engineering support consisting of nothing more than the owner-driver fiddling with the shock absorber knobs between seasons etc. Exactly as cars are prepared in lower categories.

Fully refreshed car with careful inventory of the fatigue cycles on all the components fitted? Not ruddy likely. More like flush the brake fluid, give it a polish and hope the thing makes it to the end without anything snapping!

Thankfully those days have passed. Adding a bunch of low budget once a year racers to the field would do nothing to improve the race and indeed would likely ruin it with even more safety cars.

If the 26 usual REC's start the 1000, that leaves 46 spare spots for cars in the lane

The current pitlane was designed with 72 car spots available (36 double garages)

We have as many safety cars now as we used to with double the grid size

supercars has no interest in filling its grid with a bunch of slow under funded cars. they have no desire for class racing

Supercars has been running fields of 25 -30 cars in the 1000 for over 10 years and are getting record crowds. they have a good product that is popular, their race is the fastest race on the mountain and there is no need to change it